James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

This painting appears in Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, but it was originally created for Discover Magazine to accompany a story on the vulnerable side of the Tyrannosaurus.

We often see this animal as a ruthless and invincible predator, but in fact its numbers were already declining due to climate changes around 70 million BP, when this scene is set, five million years before the asteroid impact. I chose a moment when the T. rex is drinking water from a receding water hole. He is accompanied by two juveniles, a herd of Triceratops in the distance, a softshell turtle, and various other creatures that are found together with T.rex in the Hell Creek Formation in what is now Montana.

I drew inspiration for the cracking mud and dead trees from a pond in the forest behind my home. The palmetto and cypress came from location studies in Florida.

My consultant was Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, here in his museum with skeletons of baby Maiasaura (photo by Tobey Sanford). Horner proposed the provocative idea that the T. rex may have been a scavenger as well as--or instead of--an active predator.At his suggestion, I gave the creature a reddish face, similar to the faces of vultures and many other scavengers.

This painting was recently accepted into the Focus on Nature X exhibition of natural history artwork. It will appear at the New York State Museum in Spring of 2008.

You know there's a part of me that's totally resistant to the idea of T-Rex being a scavanger. I mean I grew up with a dinosaur who was the undisputed "King of the tyrant lizards." How could an animal with such a tough sounding Latin translation be an oversized vulture? Why would it have an estimated top speed of 50 mph? My views have become less extreme though. T-Rex was probably like most predators today perfectly capable of hunting when it needed to, but not stupid enough to turn down a dead carcass that was just lying there.

P.S Those Triceritops sure don't look like they think she's a scavanger. They're in the classic defense formation that we always imagine them in.

P.S Have any paleontologist asked you to put their portraits in the book? A friend of mine informed me that Lyell (Old Earth Theory) makes an apperance in the first book, cleaning some Dinosaur's foot.

A few months ago, my dad called me up, "Frank, you're never going to believe who I met on the plane. Jack Horner"

My parents live in Three Forks, Montana where my father is a veterinary pathologist and virologist. His concentration is on sea life, and spends a significant amount of time traveling to other countries. It was on some such flight home, he got to chat with Dr Horner.

Dr Horner proposed that my father join him in researching dinosaur diseases. HOW COOL IS THAT???

There are so many things spoken of, but I have heard mentioned that the T-REX used to eat a plant to offset its erectile dysfunction just like people do now when they ingest that medicament of Viagra Online.